Veering Off Target
Aftermath
Saturday afternoon Jim and I were out in the yard throwing atlatl darts, as one does on a lovely spring afternoon. One of my shots hit the edge of the stacked hay bales we use as targets, veered right, went through a cedar tree and then through both sides of a five-gallon bucket we had set to catch rainwater under a gutter.
The bucket slowed the dart—yep, despite the darn things being taller than I am, the proper term for them is “dart”—thus preserving the thirty-two gallon trash can filled with water that was there.
So, good luck? Bad luck? Raw chance?
How you choose to see it is up to you. Or who you are, I suppose. The bucket would say “bad luck.” The trash can “good luck.” The dart “raw chance.”
All I know is that I need to get another bucket…
Dealing with what I can is how I tend to function. On that note, I’ve had a lot of queries as to how Jim and I are doing in these days of social isolation and such.
I’m happy to report that very little has changed. I already work from home. Jim is now retired, so not only doesn’t he need to go into work, he’s available to run what limited errands we need run. This keeps asthmatic me one step away from random infection.
Certain things are slowing down. Wolf’s Soul is to the stage where I need to review a print proof. Since I use Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, needless to say, there’s a slowdown. I’ll get the proof when I get it. The e-book is pretty much completed, but I’m holding it so I can release both books at the same time. This also enables me to make sure any errors I catch in the print version can be fixed, if necessary, in the e-book as well.
With the new e-book versions of the three “Breaking the Wall” novels out, and Wolf’s Soul as far along as I can take it for now, I’m moving my creative energies over to working on the yet untitled fourth novel in the “Star Kingdom” series I’ve been doing with David Weber. I’ve been working on SK4 through all the rest, but much of that work has been in the form of research rather than actual prose. My hope is to get prose written this week.
I may be writing longhand for a bit, because that’s often a good way to convince my brain to go sideways into a new universe and set of characters. We’ll see.
I wish for you what I wish for myself: May you turn bad luck into good luck, and embrace what chance hands you.
